


Camouflage

by Bitenomnom



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-03
Updated: 2012-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-28 20:26:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitenomnom/pseuds/Bitenomnom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rima Cousland does not want power, or responsibility, or to be a lady. She wants to disappear; she wants to leave dirt beneath her nails; and, perhaps more than anything else, she wants Anora.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Escape

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Um, I've never posted here before, so hopefully I'm going about this in roughly the correct way. This is my first multi-chapter Dragon Age fanfiction. It is, yes, another one of those retellings of Blight stuff, but don't plan on the inclusion of any extensive amounts of in-game dialogue. Also don't plan on this Cousland being like any Cousland you've ever met.
> 
> Many thanks to Sushifer as well as Morwen33 (Morwen Eledhwen) for their assistance. X3

The garden is all pleasant cobbled paths and blossoming roses and sprays of Andraste's Grace and six other flowers she recognizes, and three she doesn't, and one strong and twisting vine that is weaving its way up the estate's stone wall, all on its own. There are the other thorny shrubs, the ones she landed in after scaling the wall, and patches of the soft little leaves that rub up against her legs like kittens, and the spongy dirt beneath them that almost silences her footfalls as she approaches the garden's only other occupant (guards aside): another girl, who stands only a little taller but manages years more pride and composure in her straightened back.

"I brought you something else," she says, shaking the bramble from her hair, and her voice sounds as scratchy and scrawny as she is.

"Oh? And what is it?" asks the other child, golden eyebrows lifting with polite interest.

"Elfroot." The disheveled girl balls one fist into her dress, revealing the trousers she's wearing beneath as she bunches the fabric. She solemnly straightens her other arm to offer a bundle of an unimpressive plant, dirt still tumbling from its roots. Sagging, it looks its part: the type of plant that is weeded from this garden, because its roots sap away the flowers' lovely colors.

"Oh," says her companion, the one word ringing diplomatic. "I…much prefer roses. But thank you." Her eyebrows are still raised as she speaks, forming upon her face an expression of discomfort and civility and distance.

"But roses are  _stupid_ ," the other girl continues to proffer the elfroot, oblivious or headstrong or maybe just distracted as she clarifies: "because all they do is prick you. Elfroot makes you all better." With a deep breath, she pushes on: "You could put it in your hair like a rose and then it's right there to use if you get hurt." She plucks one leaf from the plant and crushes it, rubbing it against one of the deep scratches from the thorny shrubs she leapt into, and her nose stings with its acrid scent. Already, however, the wound seems to be healing.

"I…" the other blinks, her tact failing momentarily before she restores her regal tone: "I cannot put  _elfroot_ in my hair." But she pulls the plant from the girl's hand, and soberly twists it into a messy, dirt-covered crown before placing it upon the girl's head with an apologetic smile.

The scrawny girl breathes slowly, fist loosening as she exhales and diverts her gaze to take in her surroundings, too afraid to look at her crowner, and then startles: in the shadows near the guards who stand watch over the girl with the lovely gold hair and the beautiful blue eyes has appeared another set of blue eyes—the eyes of a man who she's seen speaking to her father and a man who has never spoken to her but just stares at her quietly and a man who belongs here while she most definitely does not, and so she whips around and balls her dress up irreverently in her hands while she sprints over to the wall. She scrambles up and over, knees hugging to a pillar as she wiggles her way up, and the elfroot crown tumbles from her head before she makes the final leap over the top.

"Anora," says the man, after a pause. "Come. We're dining with Maric and I'm sure that Cailan is as impatient as ever for you to arrive."

She smiles, and with one glance back over the wall, follows her father.

 

...

 

She has been thinking of three things since fleeing the castle:

She has been thinking of Fergus and

 _oh Maker when he hears we'll tear Howe a new—_

and she has been thinking of Atlas trotting beside her because

 _without him I'd_ —

and she has been thinking of being a Grey Warden and

 _by the Fade, I'm free_.

She notices Duncan looking over his shoulder at her while they travel along the edge of the woods, and steadies her gaze forward, walking with her shoulders hunched over but with some barely contained power planting each foot firmly and quietly against the ground—prowling. The footfalls are carefully placed and beat half-time with her mabari's steps. "You seem to know your way through the wilderness," he says. It is not idle chatter. "Do you…"

"I spend time outdoors," she snaps before he can finish his sentence—if he intended to, anyway. Before—before the castle was just a pile of rubble and bodies miles behind them—she would creep into Fergus' room while he was training or learning this-or-that about being a Teyrn, and take a pair of his pants, and scale the castle walls when no one was looking, and disappear into the woods for the day. Her mabari, Atlas (Atlas, which, it had turned out, was  _not_ the Dalish word for dirt), would invariably find a way to meet her on the other side. They trekked into the woods and found tracks and took dirt-baths and for those moments nobody called her  _Lady Cousland_  and everything was right.

"I hope you enjoy it," Duncan seems to be fighting off a smile. "You'll be spending a great deal more time outdoors from now on."

"Good." It is good. It is exactly what she's always wanted—besides her parents being dead and the lovely elf woman from the kitchen being dead and her giggling blush silenced and her soft thighs charred—but—no—but—besides that, this is exactly what she wants. No Grey Warden has to be a lady, a  _Lady_ , and gossip carefully and wear paints on her face. Grey Wardens can be strong without being pretty because no one gives a damn who's killing the darkspawn as long as they're getting dead. She wonders if this is the end of the nightmares about marriage ceremonies where she smells of perfume and makes vows ( _vows_!) to some sniveling nobleman. She will, she decides, wake up without wondering whether visions of unnamed Banns trying to press her back to the bed are eventualities, if her life will get ugly for slugging them across the face if they did so.

She stretches her toes in her boots, pretending she is barefoot and just running away like the normal days she'd run away. No use wondering how much it matters that she's only now getting the hang of fighting with a sword and dagger and that all she could ever really do was hide—hide, and climb, and pick locks when Fergus started thinking he could just hide his trousers away from her in trunks. She knows other, less useful things that would be of no benefit to her any more: like just how the guard who usually stood post at the kennels would blush when she shoved him up against the wall, and how the elf that lugged their laundry to and fro in the castle would find her in the cover of the shadows and submit his body to her as if he were hers to take. The thought of it makes the corners of her mouth twitch into a deeper frown and her teeth grind up against each other. They are probably dead now, the both of them. Those two and the kitchen elf, and more, all of her—all of the people who shared themselves with her and demanded no more, who kept quiet and made something sacred and feral out of those heartbeats.

"You know, Rima, being a Grey Warden does not mean you are forbidden from mourning the loss of your family," Duncan prompts, perhaps under the impression that her silence means she's holding something back, whimpers or tears or somber words.

She remains silent. She isn't thinking about—about the spark of hope as the burden of having to  _choose_ to stay or leave was removed from her shoulders—about—she isn't thinking about them.

It's not—

They aren't—

She isn't.

He clears his throat at the growls that seem to have issued from her without her noticing, at the mad way her eyes narrowed and widened as she circumnavigated everything that she could possibly… "I only thought that your loss might—upset you."

"' _Upset me_ '? Andraste's blazing  _ass_!" Rima drives her toe into the ground with a grunt, knocking a clod of dirt loose and then kicking it into a tree. She watches it burst against the trunk, and Duncan looks on with curious but careful eyes for a moment before continuing on without a word in response. Atlas whines and nudges up against her.

And at least he survived, she thinks. She remembers her parents bringing him, as a puppy, to her one morning when she was but a puppy herself. They were halfheartedly swearing and moaning that after all the time she spent sneaking off to the kennels it was going to happen sometime anyway… She thinks of her parents rolling their eyes at her nonsense-word name for the puppy as she repeatedly insisted: one of the elves told her that his mother from the alienage told him that her father had been a Dalish elf and he taught his mother some Dalish and his mother said something about earth to him once, in Dalish, and he swore it was atlas, that was the word. She thinks of Atlas' famous kitchen break-ins and Nan's shouting and Mum's soothing words to Nan (Nan! Maker bless her, Rima thinks, and remembers of all the trouble Nan has saved her from) and she thinks ( _doesn't think, doesn't think_ ) of Papa's smirks as he snickered through sessions of scolding Rima for not watching Atlas more closely.

She never needed to, anyway—it was always Atlas watching her. He knew—he knew everything. And when she wasn't, she couldn't—he was and he could. She didn't know how to say it—but Fergus knew, too, what Atlas was for her. In the awkward moments when they couldn't say what they needed to with sarcastic jabs and crass comments, Atlas would curl up by Fergus and lick his face while Rima curled by the fire across the room, watching. And Fergus would scratch behind Atlas' ears, and his tail would thump, and so would Rima's chest. "What would we do without you?" he'd ask the dog sometimes, and Rima tried not to think too hard about that, either.

"We should arrive at Ostagar by the evening after next," Duncan tells her, and she is grateful to be snapped back to the snapping twigs as Duncan walks and the crunching leaves as she follows. "Then we can get the final details sorted out and officially declare you a Grey Warden."

 _A Grey Warden_ , she thinks, and for all the things that have gone so wrong lately, there is at least this, and it is the best thing that could have happened.

 


	2. Joining

        She supposes this fellow is all right.

            Like all the others, he had squinted at her confusedly as soon as his attention turned to her, but only for a moment. With a twinkle in his eye that reminds her of Fergus like a wrenching stab (where is he? She will have to go look for him soon, _now_ , but once again, nobody wants to let her into the woods), he moves right on and snickers something about Blights and people and generally goes about chattering on like it’s nothing, like he knows her—but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know. She smirks back at him after a moment of thinking on this.

            “So,” the man, Alistair, goes on, as she’s beginning to gather he _does_ , “have you ever actually seen any darkspawn?”

            She rolls a shoulder. “No.” In their travels, she and Duncan hadn’t encountered any, though he’d taken the time to describe them to her. Her fingers twitched and she laid her hand over the pommel of her dagger every time he’d mentioned them, as if doing so would make her better at actually _using_ the thing. Rima kicks her foot against the ground. “Guess I’ll have to eventually, though, huh?” She has never fought anything worse than wolves, or bears, and those she can climb trees or run away from. But now, it will be her job to actually do away with the darkspawn. Perhaps she can sit in trees and drop things on them…better than fumbling and missing a swing of the sword.

            “Sooner than you or I want to, that’s for sure,” the corner of Alistair’s mouth curls up as his brows dip apologetically. “But, we’re Grey Wardens. It’s sort of part of the job.” And, she figures, accidentally stabbing herself trying to fend one off is probably only half as bad as what had waited for her in Highever, back before-

            Well, anyway.

            “I look forward to it,” she says. There. Manly.

            “Uh-huh,” he claps his palm into the back of her shoulder, rolling his eyes at her, and then steps forward and indicating with a tilt of his head that they head somewhere away from the location of his confrontation with the mage.

            “You sound awfully doubtful,” she turns on her toe to round herself off in front of his next step, leaning forward with a practiced piercing stare honed over years of cornering cute little things and pinning them to walls. “Why?”

When a blush creeps over his face, and he stutters a, “I-I just thought...never mind,” she is reminded of the kennel-guard, and her gut drops. “Uh,” Alistair finally speaks again. “Should we…” He bounces on the balls of his feet as he waits for her to speak, and she shakes her head before stalking off toward the other recruits. The kennel-guard could—he wasn’t—he isn’t important now. This Alistair fellow is here and she has more important things to focus on—like ducking past anyone who might recognize her. She would punch the next person to call out, “Lady Cousland?” The last thing she needs is Alistair finding _that_ out. She’s lucky he hasn’t asked her name—maybe it’ll last long enough for her to think something up, convince Duncan to back up her story... Who would she be? A farmer’s daughter? No, too much of a stretch. A guard? No, not likely; or an ill-trained one, if she was. What could someone like her _be_? She shakes the thought to deal with it later.

            “How d’you like Duncan?” Alistair finally asks, catching up to her after she’d unexpectedly rounded a corner to stop and look over the quartermaster’s wares.

            “He told my parents as they faced certain death that he’d only save me from Ho—from a sticky situation if they let me join the Wardens,” she shoves a few iron rings onto the table, and a stack of pelts she’d accumulated on the way to Ostagar.  
            Alistair frowns, his shoulders sinking a little. “He did that? Really?”

            “Do you think I’m lying?”

            “Oh! No, I—I’m sorry. I just didn’t expect—”

            She casts a gaze over her shoulder. “Don’t. It was for the best. He saved me from having to choose.”

            “So…your parents died? Do you have—any other family?”

            “A brother, F—” but maybe he would recognize the name and put the clues together and— “He might be somewhere near here, actually.” Oh, if she could find Fergus, even if Alistair recognized _him_ somehow and figured out who _she_ was, it’d be worth the trouble.

            “We should look for him, then!”

            She glances at his armor—he wouldn’t be able to sneak over a wall out into the woods like she could. Best not inform him of her plans. She scoops the silvers and coppers the quartermaster hands her up into her gloves, and turns them over in her palms, staring.

            Alistair, apparently, notices. “Something wrong? He didn’t cheat you out of any coin or anything like that, did he?”

            “No,” she says. She is as poor as an alienage elf now—well—nearly, except the weapons and the armor and the mabari and the fancy family sword she’d grabbed on the way out of the castle, but—

            “We should get back to Duncan,” he suggests.

            “You go ahead,” she tells him, counting the coin back out of her hand as the quartermaster whispers something to her and hands her a slip of paper and several poultices. Alistair frowns and leans over her to read the slip, but seems relieved to find it’s only a recipe for some kind of dog treat. “There’s—something else I need to do, but I’ll be right there.”

            “Oh, no, I can come with you,” he smiles apologetically. “I didn’t mean to sound impatient, just—”

            She tucks the goods into the pockets on the sides of her leather armor. “No, go ahead. I’d rather run this errand…” _not with you,_ she thinks, because then he will most definitely know, and she has half a mind not to bother, but… He fidgets, scratching his head and then raising his eyebrows as he waits for her to complete her thought. “…It’s…private business,” she finally says. There.

            “Oh,” he blushes ( _again!_ she thinks, and thinks again of the kennel-guard, dropping gut and all). “Sorry. Yeah. Uh. Okay. I’ll meet you at…yeah.”

            Rima wonders briefly what he had concluded _private business_ entails, but nods at him as he turns to leave. When he is far enough away that she can sink into the bustle, she gives another nod to the quartermaster and stalks off. It’s not as if this is a _big deal_ , she tells herself, and it doesn’t _mean_ anything, really; she’s not _expecting_ anything, to be certain, and it makes sense for her to stop by—

            Teyrn Loghain Mac Tir’s tent.

            The guard leaves to fetch him after a hard look and some terse words, and she squares her shoulders as he ducks out of the tent, standing, it seems, just as much taller than her as he always has been. His brows knit and he narrows his eyes a little, deciphering her, and she breathes in deeply and puffs her chest as she sees the spark of recognition in his eyes.

            “I heard news of what happened to your family,” he finally says, and she feels a quiver in her innards when the words sound so much more apologetic and feeling than what she would have expected of him. “For what it’s worth, you have my condolences, Lady Cousland.”

            Her nostrils flare and her shoulders draw up as her fists ball, and Loghain’s mouth twitches upward. “I’m a Grey Warden now,” she says, “not…”

            Immediately his trace of amusement falls. “Grey Wardens,” he sneers. Rima’s brows rise and her chest deflates as she waits for Loghain to continue. “Cailan continues to insist on seeing them as the glorious heroes those foolish legends have painted them to be. I think,” now his own nostrils flare, “that he would volunteer to _become_ one were he not King.”

            Rima’s gaze falls to her feet for a few moments as she gathers her breath. When she looks back up, she spreads her stance and hunches forward slightly, as if bracing herself for an overpowering gust of wind. She exhales. “And what does Anora think? Of the Wardens?”

            Loghain’s eyes narrow and he tilts his head back to observe her. Her hunched shoulders draw her closer, and she is balanced on the balls of her feet leaning forward as he pulls away, snorting dismissively. “If you’ll excuse me, _Warden_ , I have important business to tend to. I have only so much time before the battle and I must use it to advise Cailan against his latest grab for _glory_ —not to answer such—questions.”

            And like he was never there, he turns and rolls his shoulders and has disappeared back into the tent.

…

  
            “You know, this might be the last afternoon we’re alive,” Daveth points out, straying nearer to Rima as she steps around a particularly prominent tree root to gather yet another handful of elfroot. She cannot tell if he has been kidding this entire time—after all, when was the last time someonemade advances on _her_? At the castle, naturally, either they were all noblemen (who, upon meeting her, seemed more often than not to share her disinterest), or they were servants and workers and the like, all of whom were wont to edge around her until she told them what she wanted, because they were…well, but she wasn’t at the castle now, and Daveth had no reason to treat her as anything other than someone just as good at sinking into the shadows as he is. For all he knows, she figures, she’s another lowly cutpurse like himself.

            “Might be,” she answers.

            “You ain’t a virgin or nothing, are you?”

            “No.”

            “But still, it’d be a real shame to go outta the world unhappy. Can’t say I can even count how many weeks it’s been since I had a lady.”

            Her hair bristles visibly, prickling in waves up her neck and arms, and she whips around, planting one well-placed and apparently unexpected shove against his chest. She stomps forward as he stumbles back over the tree roots and then squats over him, grabbing him by the dingy amulet he’d picked off of one of the dead bodies they’d come across in the Wilds. “Think you’d be the one doing the taking, huh?” Rima hisses. Her foot slips from beneath her and her knee snaps into the leather between his legs, pressing up into the junction with uncomfortable force as she leans forward and releases the amulet. Daveth’s head thuds against a tree root before he can catch himself. “There’s a thicket just over there,” she tells him, teeth nearly scraping at his nose. “Say the word and I’ll show you what I mean.” Her knee nudges into the leather covering his smalls. She nips at his nose before pulling her head away, and her lips peel back to reveal a smirk when his cheeks redden.

            “Uh,” he squirms a little, and she lifts her knee from between his legs—slowly.

            Alistair coughs, markedly averting his gaze from the two of them. “So, uh, anyway, I think we’re actually pretty close to where the documents are supposed to be…”

            Rima flashes a wider smirk at Daveth and pulls herself to her feet, huffing a satisfied puff of air through flared nostrils. “Lead the way,” she says to Alistair, but the man waits for her to take step in front of him. Jory rolls his eyes at Daveth as they follow.

            “Here!” Alistair dashes forward. “Look! …Oh. They’re…it’s…” his face falls. “…Empty.”

            “Great,” Daveth mutters, rubbing at the tip of his nose. “Now what?”

            “I don’t—” Jory begins to speak, but is distracted as Rima abruptly shifts her gaze from him to a figure strolling down a path from the side.

            “Well, well. What have we here?” the figure asks, and slips from the shadows. As she continues to speak, Rima moves her weight from foot to foot, rolling her shoulders. Where had she come from? After so many years of keeping sharp ears for Fergus’ footfalls in the woods, how had she not heard these steps? The woman is stunning—beautiful. Her eyes slide from Daveth to Jory to Alistair to Rima, buttery-gold and knowing. Rima is drawn into them and held there, imagining herself nestled into this wise Wilds-woman’s exposed curves; she is expelled when the woman addresses her directly. “What say you? Hm? Scavenger, or intruder?”

            She is not an intruder. Maybe they are—the others—but she isn’t. “Visitor,” Rima mutters. Why isn’t Atlas here? He should be here. “We came to find this tower because the Wardens owned it.”

            “We had documents here,” Alistair adds.

            “Well, ‘tis clearly a tower no longer,” the woman says. “See how the Wilds have consumed its desiccated corpse.” She paces past them, eyes fixed on a distant point. “I have been observing you _visitors_ , thinking I might decipher _what_ you were doing here. And _this_ is why you came? Simply to disturb that which has been untouched for so long?”

            “Careful. Don’t answer her,” Alistair mutters to Rima as she opens her mouth to speak. “She may be Chasind, and if she is, there are _more_ nearby.” Rima is about to snap that if there are more she would have heard—but—this woman caught them by surprise, so perhaps not.

            “Oh! You fear barbarians will swoop down upon you!” the woman’s eyes narrow in amusement. And now, as Alistair mumbles something back, Rima is looking—because—if there _are_ others—she could— _live_ here—oh, but she is a Warden, but—maybe—later. Yes, later. She will come back and find the Chasind and see if they’re so bad as everyone says.

            “She’s a witch of the Wilds, she is!” Daveth insists. A—yes, she supposes she’s _heard_ this tale before, but—this woman is _far_ too beautiful—

            “You there,” the woman’s gaze is piercing into her. She shifts her weight again, straightens her back. “Women do not frighten like little boys.” The corners of Rima’s mouth lift for a moment before she realizes that this woman did not squint at her for one moment. She wonders if this one can somehow _smell_ her, smell her like she can move without making sound. “I watched you back there,” her eyes dart to the tree roots Daveth had stumbled over, and she smirks. “You seem sensible enough. So: Tell me your name, and I shall tell you mine.”

            No use lying: This woman can probably read her mind, too. “Rima,” she says, and from behind her Alistair seems to choke on something. Before he can speak, however, she hurries on: “A pleasure to meet you.”

            “Manners!” the woman exclaims. “Even here in the Wilds! You may call me Morrigan.”

            “Morrigan,” Rima repeats, nodding.

            “So I would suppose that you came here seeking something in that chest?” she motions to the empty, wrecked thing over which Alistair had expressed such dismay. “Something,” Morrigan adds after a moment, “that is here no longer?”

            Alistair huffs, crossing his arms. “You stole them, didn’t you?” Morrigan’s eyes glimmer.

 

…

 

            As they follow Morrigan back to her mother’s, Rima deflects curious gazes from Alistair by walking beside the so-called witch, whom Alistair seems to be managing with some success to ignore while still following.

            “Have you seen a man around here?” Rima asks.

            “Several,” the woman responds dryly, and rolls her eyes back to the others. “But I suppose you intend to ask after someone specific? I am, after all, little more than a tool for gathering information for others.”

            Her brows tuck down. “My brother.” She rattles off everything she can think to say about him, down to, “And he screams like a girl when he’s startled.”

            Morrigan chuckles. “And has he a name?”

            “Fergus.” Alistair bursts into a conspicuous coughing fit.

            “Hm,” Morrigan pointedly ignores him. “I have seen no such man. Perhaps he is one of the dead ones strewn about,” she suggests, motioning to them. “They _have_ been making _such_ a racket. There seem to be simply too many darkspawn about for them to make it in and out alive.”

            Rima’s gut turns.

            “Fear not,” Morrigan continues, seeing her wince. “We are under my mother’s protection at present. They will not attack _you_ —for now.”

            “That’s not it—” she begins, but at Morrigan’s doubtful—confused?—stare, she falters. Where is Atlas? Why didn’t he come along? When she cannot think of a way to explain to this woman why she _needs_ to find her brother, safe and _alive_ , and is stuck pinned under her stare, Rima quickly finds several urgent questions to ask Alistair about the documents. She falls into step beside him and continues there even after she has asked everything she can dream up, pacing silently at his side and occasionally checking his expression with a tilt of her head over a defensively shrugged shoulder.

            “Are you…?” Alistair finally asks when he happens to catch her looking.

            “Not now.”

            “Okay.”

…

            As soon as they reach the main camp at Ostagar again, Alistair is nervous -- nervous to witness this Joining, in circumstances that feel so much direr than they had at his own, and nervous about getting to know the recruits more but _not too much_ in case he gets too fond of them, and nervous about the battle everyone is guessing will happen tomorrow. They hand Duncan the blood and the documents and tell him the story of Morrigan and her mother, and he gives Alistair and the recruits strict instructions for where and when the Joining will take place. As Jory parts with timid steps toward the armory, Daveth strides toward _somewhere_ with a grin -- probably to speak to some poor woman, Alistair thinks; probably some poor woman who’s not Rima and who won’t smack him into a wall or whatever like Rima did.

 _Rima, Rima_ \-- when she’d spoken her name to that nasty witch-woman (thank goodness, he thinks, that they finally got rid of her after that far-too-long walk back to camp on which she’d been forced by her mother to accompany them), he’d recalled some passing mentions, here and there, of Teyrn Cousland’s daughter, who had the same name and if she had the same brother she _had_ to be the same person, right? The templars-in-training were as gossipy as a pack of women sometimes, and he’d heard chatter about most anyone in the nobility—this girl, this woman, this Rima, was no exception. (What was it he’d heard about her? He couldn’t remember now -- it’s not like he’d ever really cared about any of it.) He’d always assumed, though, that someone called Lady Cousland would be…prettier. But he isn’t sure—maybe are were others with her name, and her high-born accent and fancy armor are coincidence. Maybe the sword she lugs about with the Cousland crest is merely a mark that she’d lived in Highever. Or stole things from high places. But then, she’d mentioned Fergus, who he’d most certainly heard Eamon mention several times—maybe even glimpsed, once or twice—before being sent off to become a Templar. But why hadn’t she said…? Ah, but he hadn’t even asked her name. _Well done, Alistair_ , he thinks to himself. _You always were_ great _with the ladies. Not awkward at all._  Maybe she’d withheld the information just to get back at him. Or  maybe—well, no, her case was nothing like his.

            Alistair waits for her to stalk off too, because he needs to talk with Duncan, about -- about important things, of course, like the Joining and the battle and the recruits and... But Rima remains in place, spreading her stance and crossing her arms, staring down her nose at him as well as someone he figures can’t be much taller than the average _elf_ can stare _down_ at him. “You, ah, need to talk to Duncan? Or something?” he asks, stepping around Duncan’s fire to stand beside her.

            “Yes,” she says. “Alone.”

            Duncan himself raises one eyebrow. “Oh? What about?”

            If she had even intended to answer, she doesn’t get the chance. Alistair nearly jumps out of his skin as King Cailan sweeps in front of their small cluster. “Wardens!” He turns to Rima, winking. “And Warden-to-be.” Still looking at her, he continues, “How was your journey into the Wilds, Lad--”

            “Rima!” she barks.

            “Yes...sorry. Rima. How was your journey?”

            “Fine!” she answers entirely too forcefully, her body expanding to look larger -- elbows out, shoulders squared, stance widened -- as if she could _intimidate_ him.

            Alistair forgets the shaking of his knees and roiling in his stomach that usually accompanies Cailan’s presence when he notices Rima’s hackles raised, and a growl, a _real growl_ vibrating from her throat. _What_ in the Maker’s name could... But nobody else seems to notice, and he sees her eyes flick to him. He takes a few swift steps back---there. At least this way she won’t be able to look at him and Cailan at the same time. That could be...disastrous. She narrows her eyes at him but rolls her attention back toward the other two when Duncan asks, “What brings you here, Your Majesty?”

            “I thought I might check with your recruits about how thick the darkspawn are running in the Wilds, but it seems I was too late to catch you all at once.” Cailan’s eyes focus on Alistair and Rima. “But the two of you should be able to tell me: how was it?”

            “Not good,” Alistair finally answers when it seems to him Rima isn’t planning on speaking any time soon. He watches her shift her weight subtly and frequently, like a predator, and he cannot decide if it is more like a cat jumping on a bird or a hawk preparing to dive into a fire. He takes a deep breath and continues. “There were...well, more than I thought there would be. We couldn’t avoid them, that’s for sure. And some of them were _powerful_.”

            “But you came through,” Cailan smiles, stepping close enough to clap Alistair on the back. Alistair yelps in a panic because _now she’s looking, now she sees us side by side and she’ll know and--_ “And I will do the same alongside the Wardens tomorrow!” He tilts his head to look past Alistair at Rima. “Becoming a Grey Warden is certainly an honor, L---Rima. I’m sure your family would be proud of you, if...”

            And Alistair just _knows_ something bad is going to happen when Rima takes one deadly silent step forward, so he whips around to face her and grabs her by the shoulders before she can do...whatever it is that she wants to do to Cailan. To the King. The sound of Duncan’s armored boots clacking closer draws his attention toward the other man, and he sees Duncan motion that he should let go. Duncan gives Rima one pat on the shoulder before Cailan amends, “My apologies; that was...insensitive. I swear to you that as soon as this battle is over, we’ll see to it that Howe is dealt with. The Couslands are far too important to Ferelden to be forgotten.”

            “With all due respect, Your Majesty,” Duncan clears his throat, “it would be best that we make going over the details of the coming battle our priority for now.”

            “Of course. And I am sure Loghain will agree,” he rolls his eyes.

            “The recruits will become Grey Wardens officially tonight. Tomorrow, let us talk through our strategies and finalize them. We should have additional information about the activity of the darkspawn by midday.”

            Cailan nods, and while he and Duncan exchange a few more words, Alistair’s eyes flit back to Rima. With any luck, he can ask her about---

            But she is gone.

…

  
            Alistair tries to ignore the way his fingers twitch as he recites the words for the Joining ritual. It is his first since his own and, and—maybe it’s much, _much_ worse knowing what’s coming. He hopes Jory lives—he seems nice enough. And Daveth—Daveth makes him a little edgy, but he is _good_ at what he does, and the vicious way he tears into things with those daggers makes Alistair glad never to have met something like _him_ on the streets. Rima—she is—neither nice nor particularly capable with her dagger and sword, but Duncan must have recruited her for _some_ reason. Maybe it is the way she knows exactly how to make her feet fall so that they don’t make any noise, or the way that she seems to be able to disappear if he looks away for just a moment. Or maybe it’s—oh—maybe _that’s_ why. If she really _is_ Rima Cousland, maybe Duncan has plans for her, something political, something...

            But it’s a bit late to ask now, in the middle of the Joining, and he will have to wait to ask after—if she lives, he thinks, and hopes none of them notice him wincing as Duncan turns to them with the chalice.

            His heart sinks as Jory backs away, and he cannot look while Duncan closes in on him. Daveth seems to have frozen in place, hand half stretched out toward the other man, and his eyes dart to Alistair’s. Alistair nods once, twisting his neck to further avert his eyes from the scene. Rima’s fists are balled but her eyes are pinned helplessly to Duncan’s back. Her mabari’s stubby tail sinks down and he shrinks behind his owner. Alistair sees Rima mouth something as she shrinks back as well, her shoulders collapsing forward. The mabari’s beady eyes turn to Daveth with Duncan’s attention, and a whine presses itself from the dog’s heavy body.

            Alistair is almost afraid that the other two will turn and flee—but Daveth seems to be stuck to the stone, and from what Alistair has seen he’s tough as dragonskin anyway, for all his slipperiness, and Rima seems no different.

            So Daveth takes the chalice, and collapses, and Rima mutters his name as Duncan apologizes. This isn’t any good at all, he thinks, and now has to physically turn his body to avoid the sight of his two fallen comrades. When presented with the blood, Rima pats her mabari once on the head and grabs the chalice, gulping it down and bracing herself as if she can keep from crumbling to the ground if she just tries—and that’s it, that’s all, no words, and the only sound is a hissing through her clenched teeth when her knees buckle and gurgling as she rolls onto her side.

            “She’ll make it,” Duncan says, pressing fingers to her neck and face. He scratches the mabari’s ear. “Alistair, would you watch over her and tell her I’d like to see her when she awakens? Right now, I need to speak with the mages about their battle plans for tomorrow.”

            “Of course,” Alistair breathes. Even he is not sure if the stale air finally leaving his lungs brings him relief or bitterness.


	3. Waves

        “You, uh...you awake?” a vaguely familiar voice was clanking around in her ears. There was a pause, a huff, and a shuffling noise. Rima could hear steps pacing away from her, and then toward her again. “Never mind. ...Oh, well, of course you don’t mind; you’re not awake.” The faint heat of a nearby body is compulsion enough for her to open her eyes. “Oh! You are!”

        “No thanks to you,” is all she can think to say, rubbing her eyes. It occurs to her that something is different than the other times she’s woken up -- besides the clamoring outside and this new person crouched beside her and the rather rough fabric upon which her head is resting instead of the silky-smoothness that she hasn’t gotten used to not having. In addition to the small amount of heat that seems to radiate from Alistair to her skin, she feels a...a swelling.

        “Did you have nightmares?” Alistair asks, and then continues without pause, “I had the _worst_ nightmares. They say it’s even worse for those who Join during a Blight.”

        Did she have nightmares?

        Oh.

        Like lava pouring through her already newly throbbing veins -- the Joining, she remembers, and the fainting and the almost-dying and then bursts of nightmares, stringed one after the other, all foggy but for the pounding left in her chest and throat and ears. “I did,” she says.

        “Bad?”

        “I suppose.” Worse than the usual? She was uncertain. How did death and darkspawn compare to marriage and submission and dependence?

        “Do you remember anything?”

        “No.”

        “That’s probably good. You will, though.”

        “I’m a Warden,” is all she can think to say.

        “Yes,” he laughs a little, unease in his fingers as they run through his hair. “You are.”

        “The others...”

        “Didn’t make it -- but...you knew that.” He pauses, his brows knitting. “I meant to ask you something.”

        “I know,” she sighs. She had been able to avoid discussing it until now, but from the way his chin lifts and his weight shifts forward to eye her critically, he already knows. But he hasn’t -- well, he hasn’t done anything stupid yet, and that’s worth something. She sits up, perhaps too quickly, and massages her scalp as her head protests against the movement. The blanket over her falls away, and Alistair averts his gaze, mumbling.

        “You got a problem with my tits?” Rima isn’t sure if she wants to snicker at him, or smack him over the head for the way he is blushing.

        “I, ah, forgot -- that you weren’t wearing a---b-band or anything. Sorry.” His eyes fix on his booted toes.

        “Do I look like I need one?” But he is most definitely not looking, so she continues on. “Didn’t think so.” She gathers the blanket around herself. “ _There._ You’re _safe_ from the mean naked chest.” Rima isn’t sure she’s ever met someone so squeamish. ...Then again, perhaps he just finds her that unappealing. _That_ certainly wouldn’t be a first.

        “Just being...um, you know, polite.”

        “Lost on me.”

        “I guess you don’t really seem that much like--” he pauses and narrows his eyes. “Oh, very clever. You thought you’d trick me into forgetting!”

        She’d thought no such thing -- hadn’t really been thinking at all -- but shrugs and drops the blanket again.

        “ _Argh!_ You are so... _mean_!” He flaps his hands in front of his eyes.

        “Tch. Cur.”

        Alistair draws back, his eyes now pointedly avoiding her own, rather than any other part of her. He bites his lip, and -- Rima thinks -- seems flushed, embarrassed even. He reminds her of a...a puppy. The awkward pause stretches for moments, and Rima cannot bear trying to recall what possibly could have offended him, so she prompts him: “Well, come on. Ask. I know you want to.”

        “Right. Uh...yes.” She pulls the blanket back up, rolling her eyes at him. “What I meant to ask is...” He takes a deep breath, and seems to be making a valiant attempt at meeting her eyes while he asks: “Are you Rima Cousland?”

        “I was.”

        “Was?”

        “Wardens lose their titles, nobility, names, yes?”

        “Something like that, I guess.”

        “So I’m just Rima now.”

        “You, uh...don’t want to be known as a Cousland?”

        “No.”

        “Oh. May I ask...why? I mean, your family has -- had -- sorry -- no -- wait, I’m really sorry, I mean -- well -- what if you’re the last...the last one?” It seems to be worrying him much more than it should. “The last Cousland? What would you do?”

        “Fergus isn’t dead,” she insists.

        He smiles. “I promise we’ll try to see if we can find him today. Or else...after the battle. If, you know...”

        “He’ll survive it.”

        “Do you have...any other family? That didn’t die?”

        She shivers a little, wondering how he can speak so lightly about the massacre--but he didn’t see it, she supposes, the endless trail of bodies being eaten alive by fire and knives. If she had stopped to look at them, would she have been able to identify them? It doesn’t matter now, she tells herself, breathing deeply and squaring her shoulders. “Not that I know of.”

        “So if your brother...you know...doesn’t make it...?”

        “He will.” _He has to._

        “It’s a big battle. You have to...uh, think. About things like that. Or so I’ve been told. I kind of thought maybe Duncan thought he could do something with...politics and that stuff. With you. I mean, no offense, but you’re not that great at stabbing things. Why would he make you a Warden? Do you know?”

        “No.” The corners of her mouth turn down. She knows she’s no good with a sword and dagger, but hearing it said so plainly by someone else is different. “Well, he’d originally come for someone else. His options were...fewer...after Howe attacked. But he’d said, at one point, that he really wanted _me_. Maker knows why.”

        “Well, I’m sure some of the other Wardens will help you brush up. One fellow can -- oh, but, you’ll see later, I guess.”

        She chews her lip for a moment. “What are the other Wardens like?” Alistair and Duncan are not exactly the same -- she wonders which one of them is the exception to the rule.

        “Oh, you know,” he grins, apparently recalling fond memories, “normally everyone’s pretty rowdy, like a big family of brothers. You should’ve been there when...ah, it doesn’t matter. Like I said, you’ll see later.”

        “There are no women?”

        “Oh. Uh. I guess not.” He snickers a little. “And if you’ll pardon me for saying it, _my lady_...” She springs up and lunges after him, but he seems to have been expecting it, and ducks to the side, “...I think I’m not too out of hand saying maybe there still _aren’t_.”

        She snorts, grinning, as she picks herself up. “That so?”

        Alistair averts his gaze from her again-bared chest. “I was joking. Um. About...I know you’re...you know. A woman.”

        Rima rolls her eyes. “Let’s just get going, shall we?”

        “Yeah. I don’t know exactly what Duncan’s plans are,” he scratches his head, “but maybe he’ll let you go look for your brother before the battle.”

        “I certainly hope so.”

        “No time to lose, then!”

…

        Alistair cranes his neck to meet gazes with Rima, who seems to hover atop the wall like a hazy ghost amidst the afternoon shadows of the trees and their branches. “There’s no way I can get up there!” he whispers. The only part of her that he can really discern is her eyes, and he watches them roll.

        “Just follow Atlas.”

        “Your _dog_?”

        “He’s clever. He’ll know a way. But be _quiet_ , will you?”

        He’d taken Rima to Duncan as asked, and after Duncan informed her that she would be attending the final meeting with the King and Teyrn Loghain that evening ( _why?_ he thought -- continues to think -- _why Rima?_ but he figures Duncan must have a reason; he always does) and no, her brother hasn’t shown up yet, and no, she can’t go look for him and ought to be doing more important things, like learning to sense the Taint, or seeing if she can’t get some better boots from the armory, or maybe at least eating a good dinner and praying to the Maker?

        Rima had left without saying much at all, blending in and out of the soldiers and the tents and the mages as Alistair struggled to keep up. “I’m looking for him,” she’d said, and he supposes he should have figured. She’d asked him to help.

        Well, what could he do? Her brother was obviously...important to her. Family was important. Of course he would help. Maybe they could...practice on the way. So he’d nodded and followed her and her mabari and now here she was, somehow atop a wall like it was nothing, and waiting for him.

        “Okay,” he mutters, and looks to the dog. Maybe he is as clever as Rima says. “He’s really that smart?”

        “Smarter than you.”

        He squints his eyes shut and blows her a raspberry, but when he peers back at her, she is gone. The mabari yips quietly, rear end swinging back and forth with his tail. “All right. Lead on, boy.”

        And he does. Alistair stops when he stops, waits while he sniffs, shifts his eyes to the left when the mabari turns his head to the right. They seem to be tracing a wide arc around the...

        And then they are in the Wilds.

        “Good boy,” Rima pats Atlas. She turns to Alistair and nods---in thanks, maybe, he thinks---before looking back to the dog. “Do you smell him anywhere?”

        The mabari whines, and they tentatively set off into the woods.

        “You know we can’t spend too long here.”

        “I know.”

        “Especially because the darkspawn are probably amassing as we speak. It could be really dangerous.” He pauses. “Well, it’s definitely really dangerous. Speaking of which, can you sense them yet? Do you feel that sort of...buzzing?”

        She shakes her head. “No. Where?”

        “Ah...to the south. Nothing? I guess it takes a while for you to really be able to sense the Taint in other things. Can you feel me---ah---I mean---can you---you know, sense me?”

        She seems to be smirking at him as he gets more flustered. “Yes. A little. I think.”

        “That’s good. Duncan says it comes in handy in battle. Luckily for us, Wardens and darkspawn feel different. And different kinds of darkspawn feel different, like...”

        “Shut up,” she tells him, and he notices that she is now crouched and leaning against a tree. Her mabari is low to the ground as well, at a glance indistinguishable from the brown fallen leaves. He glances about for -- what in Andraste’s name are they doing? -- but feels an unexpected yank as Rima pulls him behind her tree. “Bear,” she mouths. He raises his eyebrows. “Big one.”

        And he can see, off in the distance, the bear to which she is referring. But hadn’t most of the animals -- oh. As he stretches his senses that way, he mutters, “Tainted.” Alistair turns back to her and jumps a little because even though she is _right there_ he can barely see her. They both wince as his armor creaks, but the bear doesn’t seem to find it noteworthy, and lumbers on.

        “How do you do that?” he finally asks.

        “Do what?”

        “I dunno...disappear!”

        She shrugs one shoulder. “If I tried to kill a bear every time I saw one, I’d be dead.”

        “You are pretty abysmal with a bow and arrow.”

        “I know.”

        “I’m kind of surprised you didn’t even pin Jory’s foot to the ground once. You were close, though.”

        “Shut up.”

        They are silent for some time after that -- Alistair cannot tell if Rima is thinking of Jory, or stewing over her inability to shoot pointy sticks at things, or just really focused on searching for her brother. Probably the last, he figures.

        “We really need to get back,” he says eventually, seeing the dimming light of the setting sun through the trees. She nods solemnly. “Sorry we didn’t find him.”

        “There’ll be time after the battle.”

        “Of course.”

        “Are you ready?”

        “Me? For the battle? Uh. Well, as ready as I’ll ever be. You know, not all of us are hopeless at actually hitting things.” His head snaps to an odd angle and he claps one hand against his cheek as Rima’s fist leaves it. “Ow.” Alistair turns to find her walking away and huffs as he shuffles to catch up. “ _Hey._ ”

        “Just be glad I didn’t break your pretty nose.”

        “You think it’s pretty?” He touches it. She ignores him and he hangs behind her as she strides with purpose toward the wall -- the same one she’d climbed over before -- and nods to Atlas. “Well, uh, have fun in your meeting with King Cailan.”

        “Don’t remind me,” she groans.

        “What’s your problem with...” he trails off as she scales the wall. Alistair turns to Atlas just in time to see his tail disappear around the corner. “ _Maker_ ,” he mutters, and dashes after him.

…

        “Ah, good,” Duncan stretches an arm around Rima’s shoulders. “You’re here. Just in time.” She lifts her chin to deflect the light accusation in his tone.

        Loghain snorts, not removing his eyes the map he hovers over. “Congratulations, Commander, on your fine choice of barely punctual recruits.” Rima stiffens and eyes Duncan, awaiting further reprimand.

        “I am sure she was doing something valuable with her time,” Cailan asserts before anyone else can speak. “And anyway, Loghain, we’re all here now, so let’s not squabble.”

        Rima’s eyes dart from one daunting figure to the next---Loghain, Duncan, one particularly fearsome mage, and in the drizzle and firelight of the coming evening, even Cailan seems larger than life---as they move closer to the map, arranging themselves and falling into form naturally. She cautiously prowls forward. Why she is here, she is not sure---but---someone will tell her, won’t they, if they need her? And she will just wait here quietly. Maybe...maybe this is not so different from using her father’s maps to plot adventures into the woodlands when she was young. Or did they think she had experience with this? That because she had been in the process of slowly consuming every book in the library, that because she didn’t fall asleep during her lessons she would _know_ about how to organize a battle? Fergus probably knew all about it. Fergus probably learned all about it training to be teyrn.

        Loghain seems to have remained deliberately distant from the king, and it is this space she finds herself squeezing into, avoiding curious gazes from Cailan. “You seem to believe that you can simply _play_ at war,” Loghain is reprimanding the man, and when he notices Rima, his nostrils flare. “See; you and your Grey Wardens have even brought a playmate to our meeting! Why is she here?” he shrugs in her direction, waving the back of his hand toward her.

        Rima turns to look at him, almost stepping backward onto Cailan, and immediately regrets her positioning. Her eyes reach for Duncan.

        “She is just as much a Grey Warden as any other,” Duncan says, and Rima exhales silently in relief. “And we are a part of the plan, no? I have no doubt that Rima will be able to perform whatever duties we request of her for this battle.” This, she thinks, must be a warning. She wonders if Duncan believes she was planning on fleeing during the battle. She wonders if she would. If she will. No---no, the best place for her now is with the Wardens. If Wardens can desert---if they can desert and _live_ \---even then, where would that put her? Alone with her mabari in a land that, according to the Wardens, will soon be crawling with darkspawn. Being a Grey Warden is...good. Purposeful. If what Alistair says is true, tomorrow night she will maybe be around a campfire with her new brothers---listening to their bawdy stories, maybe even telling one herself. Maybe she will fit right in, once she has time to meet them. She can...get her face dirty and learn how to decapitate darkspawn and arm-wrestle the other Wardens to claim first pick of the women at the next tavern or inn or whorehouse they stop at. In a Blight, Wardens must be like war heroes, she decides. Women will find her dashing and brave and swoon over her, and she can catch them in her arms.

        “Of course,” Rima finally responds, when she realizes that the others crowded around the map are staring intently at her. “It’s my duty as a Warden.”

        “Most admirable,” Cailan pats her on the shoulder, apparently genuinely pleased. Rima hunches over the table, frozen and hoping that the others will pass it off as an intent look at the map. “That is why I propose that the Wardens light the beacon at the Tower of Ishal. It’s an important job and we need the best!”

        “My soldiers will suffice,” Loghain spits. “Keep your Wardens where they belong: battling darkspawn. They should be on the front lines. _You_ , however, as I believe I have had to state _far_ too many times, should not.”

        “Allow some of my men to do it,” the mage suggests. “Mages would be the most effective choice. What’s more, imagine the kind of havoc a pair of battlemages could wreak on the horde from the vantage point of the Tower after lighting the beacon!”

        “Unnecessary!” Loghain retorts.

        “The mages are few enough,” Duncan agrees. “It would be unwise to remove even one or two of them from battle for any amount of time.”

        Rima turns her shoulders and cranes her neck to observe the Tower of Ishal, and tries to imagine that she is atop it. The thought is dizzying -- even the highest point she’d ever climbed to on the castle is nothing in comparison. What would the battle look like, from there? She shivers. If she were to stand up there and slip over the edge, there is nothing to catch hold of until the ground, and by then it would be too late. To be far above someone and observe without being seen -- that is good. But the Tower... “Are there any types of darkspawn that could topple it?” she asks. “The Tower?”

        “Only the Archdemon could perform such a feat,” Duncan says. “And there have been no sightings, so...we may hope for the best. The number of darkspawn crowding at the edge of the Wilds is massive, by all estimates, but if our strategy works, they will be manageable. If the Archdemon appears...everything will change.”

        “It won’t,” Loghain says. “This is no Blight. Your scouts have seen no dragon; there is no dragon. Wouldn’t you know if there was one, _Grey Warden_?”

        Duncan sighs, and Rima grips absently at the edges of the table with her gloved fingers, curling and uncurling her toes as if their movement might help her puzzle out why Loghain has such distaste for the order. _Not that it matters,_ she tells herself, because, well, what’s Loghain to her, anyway? Nothing, of course. Just the Hero of River Dane, a hero as he is to all Fereldans. If he has opinions about Grey Wardens---so be it. He would not, she thinks, let it keep them from victory. “If Loghain says we don’t need Grey Wardens at the tower,” Rima pins her eyes to the smaller, flatter tower on the map after they dart once to Cailan, “is sending them there really necessary?” At Loghain’s surprised harrumph of approval and Cailan’s sigh, warmth shivers into Rima’s shoulders. _Take that, Cailan._

        “It’s essential to the plan. I won’t trust the duty to a common soldier,” he argues, and the only thing that keeps Rima from spitting in his face is Loghain at her back, and the reminder of his presence in the form of his fist smacking into the table. Cailan smiles faintly, peacefully, even as her features screw up in irritation. “A pair of Wardens will do it, and seal the victory for us as I enter battle alongside their brothers---glory for everyone!”

        “Yes,” Loghain frowns, and Rima watches his fists clench as he mutters, “Glory for us all.”

        Cailan chuckles and Loghain’s brow furrows deeper and Rima wonders whether it would be terribly unpatriotic for her to hope that at the very least Cailan’s _glorious_ hair will be singed in battle, or maybe that his _glorious_ foot will be stepped on by an ogre. Before the temptation to say so overwhelms her, she stiffly turns on her heel to follow Duncan, nodding to Loghain as she leaves---but seems to be too busy scrutinizing his own crossed arms to notice.

…

        Alistair watches her press one palm to the floor, then the other, and close her eyes as if she can will the cold of the stone up through her hands. Her breathing is soft, silent, deliberate—perhaps so that she can coerce its heat back through the stone, he figures, and somewhere within the circle of flowing heat and cold, exchange secrets with the granite. When she pulls her hands up, they peel from the ground with a dull sticking sound, and the procedure is repeated on the wall, eyes closed, fingers stretched, as she kneels. She tilts her head in, and leans her ear against the wall’s bricks; maybe their secrets are quieter still. As she slides up the wall, ear and hands in place, Alistair begins wondering whether she just has a _thing_ for stone and that is why, for a split-second, she is something other than a wall herself, or maybe something other than a noblewoman....maybe even a woman at all. “Anything?” he finally whispers, lest she start pressing other parts of her into the wall next. He remember’s Daveth’s nervous laugh after she’d— _attacked_ , but that wasn’t quite the right word—him in the Wilds, all pressed up close to him and whispering like she knew him like that. With the way he’d kept looking at her afterward, maybe she did...

        “About ten, mostly genlocks,” is her response after several moments more, her whisper harsh, and she motions to a door. “Mabari, too. Must be caged or either they or the darkspawn would be dead.” Her mabari lifts his head proudly, as if asserting that of _course_ the mabari would have won. Alistair is half-convinced the dog is trying to say just that. “I will enter at this door, and sneak up from behind. You wait at the next door—it’s far enough you can open it a crack without their noticing. They’re all on this side.” He nods. “When I attack from the shadows, you and my dog charge.” Alistair glances at the mabari. _Atlas_ …what a strange name—gibberish, he figures, but it must mean something to her. She continues: “Let the mage back you up from afar. I’ll do what I can to release the mabari, if they are indeed in cages...and if they’re in shape to assist.” Her tone sombers further---at the prospect that they might _not_ be, Alistair figures. This time there are two nods, and her mabari sniffs in agreement.

        She pulls her dagger and sword from her back and presents them to the mage. “If you would,” she speaks in a voice that very much says _you will_ in case there is any question about it. Alistair brings forward his sword, as well, to have the mage’s fire cast on it. For a woman who appears to be only somewhat trained at best with her weapons, and, as he’d witnessed in the woods, absolutely awful with a bow, she seems to know what she’s doing.

        “How do you do that?” Alistair whispers to her while the spell is being cast. “You can’t even sense darkspawn yet, really—you were Joined too recently. Plus the mabari…”

        “Practice,” she says, serious expression unwavering, and he sighs. He’d been under the impression that nobility ( _nobility_ \---it’s already so strange to think of her as a noblewoman even though he _knows_ she is)...nobility are usually taught how to use nice words and give flowery descriptions and say things just right. Then again, he’d also been under the impression that noblewomen are trained to be polite and courteous and all those other rather overrated qualities that seem to be expected by people who wear fancy trousers and sit in nice chairs. Rima...Rima isn’t so bad. She’s not exactly nice, and definitely not polite, but least she doesn’t lie through her teeth. She’s barely nobility at all. Well, she’s _not_ , he reminds himself. She’s a _Warden_.

        “Well?” her voice slaps him to the present, to this dank hallway in the Tower of Ishal. “Go.”

…

        Rima’s breath hitches in her throat.

        All the way up the Tower she has managed---barely. She knows the only times she’d been helpful were outside doors---a brief warning before they were overrun by darkspawn, sometimes ready with a plan and sometimes just with two words: “Brace yourself.”

        This is different from the Wilds---huge groups, waiting for them, and they without Daveth’s sure hands and Jory’s solid swings. Atlas is good---strong---keeps fighting past even the worst of wounds---but he, like Rima, is inexperienced despite all the times he’s had to fight down wolves in the woods to protect her. The Mage with them is of some assistance, enchanting their weapons, casting all manner of spells, but -- in a room crowded with darkspawn, how can he avoid being hit? And in those flimsy robes?---he has fallen even more frequently than Rima.

        It seems all she can do is dash between the others with poultices and salves and hope that they can keep her from dying while she searches the darkspawn corpses and crates for more.

        And now?

        Now there is an ogre.

        The mage seems to rattle through three or four spells from the start, slowing the ogre, giving Alistair and Atlas the chance to charge. _Shit_ , Rima thinks, and skirts around the edges of the room, eyeballing the signal they’re to light -- they’ve probably missed it, and she can’t look, couldn’t even peer over the edge and glimpse it just now, if they had perfect timing, because Alistair never told her what the signal was, and there is an _ogre_.

        She could light it -- light it right now -- but -- what if it is exactly the _wrong_ time? And the ogre will crash across the room and eat her.

        She glimpses over the edge anyway, and catches her hands on the wall as the stone shakes beneath the ogre’s lumbering form, looking away before she can really see anything, because the Tower is _tall_ and _shaking_ and she would fall so _far_.

        “Rima!” Alistair calls out in a choked voice as she regains her bearings, and Rima realizes that he is in the ogre’s hands--really _stuck_ in the ogre’s hands! _Shit_ , she thinks again, and is dashing across the room, clear in the open in a way that makes her stomach sicker than it already is with the stench of darkspawn, and leaps and drags her dagger down the ogre’s back. It flings Alistair across the room and turns to Rima, sweeping up one of the stone statues and hurling it at her.

        Getting out of the way is one thing Rima can do. She rolls across the floor, and before the ogre can assault her again, it is distracted by Atlas and the mage.

        “Thanks,” Alistair mutters, crouching in the shadows and trying to regain his breath, “but... _ah_...Rima...” he winces as he stands on his injured leg. “I, uh, I don’t mean to sound...” his voice is muffled, Rima thinks, or maybe her ears are just full of...full of the _bad_ stuff in the air, “...but I really wish...” She wonders if she is underwater, if that’s why she can’t hear or breathe. There is a distant crunching and Rima thinks maybe it’s somebody’s bones, and maybe that weird ringing is actually a scream. Alistair is still mumbling -- his lips are moving -- she thinks she sees -- “Jory” -- and tries to puzzle it out, but the waves start sloshing around again in her ears, because the ogre is coming back and the _ogre_ is coming _back_ and Alistair can’t even stand yet and ---

        Rima presses her last poultice into Alistair’s shaking hands and _charges_ , trying to channel Atlas, daggers at the ready, _screaming_ , running, stealing away the ogre’s attention.

        She takes another leap, like before, but this time from the front, this time right for -- for its eye or its chest or whatever she can reach. Her hands tighten around the pommels.

        _Ka-slap_ \---the ogre waves its hand. It waves its hand. It waves its hand and Rima’s dagger is out of her hand and her arm really hurts and she is still in the air, spinning out of control, and she flails with the other arm but the flat side of the dagger slaps uselessly against the ogre’s chest and then she is stuck and she is stuck and she is drowning.

        The waves are back and they rattle not just her ears but also her lungs and her belly.

        The waves are the ogre’s fingers, pressing against the leather armor---the stupid, worthless leather armor. The waves are the booming echoes of his roar as his spittle smacks against her face, wetter than the rain outside. The waves are Atlas’ whines as the ogre kicks him across the room.

        Rima gasps for air but can’t hear noise.

        She remembers a noise: She remembers pressing her ear to the crack beneath the door to the cellar and hearing Anora laughing. She remembers Cailan’s voice, younger than it is now, _somehow, younger_ than it is now: “My Queen! You will be honored for the service you have done to Ferelden by slaughtering this ogre!” Anora, laughing again.

        Rima gasps for air again.

        She remembers the quiet: She remembers the quiet of the night with just a single point of light and her pen scratching desperately at parchment, the soft padding sound of her lips mouthing the words she wrote. She remembers Fergus bursting in but then instead of shouting, staring, just staring over her shoulder and sighing, sighing over the stinging in her eyes and the cold little streams on her face.

        “Don’t cry.”

        Rima gasps for air again.

        Through the muffling of the water she swears she hears it again: _Don’t cry._

        _Rima, don’t cry._

        _Rima, don’t---_

        But it is _Alistair_ shouting, Alistair _screaming_ : “Rima, don’t die!”

        Alistair _soaring_.

        Somehow, somehow in his heavy armor, he leaps _over_ her, sword arcing just past her to be driven into the ogre’s chest, _deep_ , and as the ogre staggers and falls, Alistair kneels against it and drives the sword in again. The ogre’s arm swings out, fist unclenching to leave Rima rolling onto the floor, coughing up blood and flexing her fingers to see if they still work and dully noticing that when the ogre had squeezed her arms against her torso, the dagger she hadn’t dropped had pressed its way past her damaged armor and sliced partway into her leg.

        “Maker,” he is whispering, and picking her up, and waving his hands in front of her eyes. She stands -- well -- if it can be called that -- and shrugs him away, and squints. “We’re late, surely,” he says, brows dipped, big strong shoulders sinking, and then, “We should light it now, and maybe...!”

        “You do it, you...la...lazy bastard,” Rima manages, and for some reason Alistair chuckles a little at that. And he does, he lights it, because he can still walk, Maker _bless_ him, and the blaze goes up and she looks to Atlas, who is licking his wounds but, sweet Andraste, _alive_ , and she looks to what probably used to be the mage that had come with them (after all that, she thinks, after all that at the meeting about _needing all the mages_ ), and she figures that it was almost a lot worse and maybe at least now she can brag to the other Wardens that _they_ didn’t get crushed by an ogre and live to tell the tale, now did they?

        “You hear something?” Alistair asks, fingers stretching for his sword.

        She does. Waves. “Crawling.”

        Alistair’s chest shakes---she sees it, it shakes. “Darkspawn.”

        She reaches for her dagger but that’s all she has time to do, before the waves fill her ears, waves of _too many darkspawn, too many_ , and she’s drowning again.


End file.
